In the context of the present invention, forms are structured computer-generated documents or displays used for data entry to computer systems and possibly also for data verification during the data entry process. Forms allow a form provider to acquire structured and standardised data by asking one or more respondents to fill in instances of the form. The data acquired is generally stored in a database so that it can be extracted by appropriate queries and analysed.
Data entry forms are widely used by a number of different stakeholders, including: users who wish to collect data using forms; form creators who create forms for use by an organisation or by multiple organisations and who may wish to share forms with, or licence forms to, other users; forms automators who may include software vendors and IT departments responsible for the electronic automation of forms; and forms analysers who may include data analysts, information specialists and managers who wish to use, aggregate and work with the data captured using forms.
There can be substantial benefits in providing sets of standardised forms for use by many users. This reduces or avoids duplication of effort in creating forms for multiple organisations which have the same or similar data capture requirements, and also provides a consistency in data capture such that captured data can be shared between the organisations which are using common data entry forms.
However, many organisations or other users of data capture forms may have specific needs for data capture or preferences for data capture that they would prefer to implement over and above the generic data capture provided by a standardised form. While the use of a template form or generic standardised form is an ideal starting point, those organisations or users may prefer to add to, delete from, or amend a standardised form so as to allow for slightly different data capture requirements. Allowing such amendments to the standardised forms increases the flexibility for use of the forms by multiple organisations, but presents problems relating to maintaining data integrity and data compatibility between data collected using different versions of the forms. It may also create problems with version control of standard and modified forms and prevent or inhibit aggregation of data acquired using different versions of shared or otherwise generic standardised forms. It may also make it difficult to perform searches on data that has been captured using different form versions and present problems with saving captured data to different databases.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a solution to some or all of the above problems.
In GB 2293667B an innovative database system is described which configures a storage model based on a conceptual data model in accordance with a hierarchical structure. Every entity, every attribute and every entity occurrence is assigned a unique, multi-character expression which defines the relationship between each entity, attribute and entity occurrence with every other entity, attribute and entity occurrence in the database and may also uniquely define an attribute value to an occurrence of an entity. The expressions are stored in an expression set table linking each element of each expression with a natural language phrase relating the expression to a hierarchical level and a position in a data model. The “expressions” used are multi-character expressions conveniently divided into a number of “words”, each of a number of bytes.
Each multi-character expression indicates a context (in the data model), a specification (e.g. a description/definition of the data being encoded) and a quality (e.g. actual data values or pointers thereto). Where any of these components are unknown or irrelevant, a wildcard character or “non-deterministic” character can be used. A feature of the expressions used to describe the data model is that similar data structures can be replicated throughout the main tree of multi-character expressions by changing only selected characters in the expression. As discussed in detail in the patent GB 2293667B, and in subsequent related patent GB 2398143B, the use of these multi-character expressions to store data in a database offers extremely fast searching and context switching capability when accessing data from the database.
In the present invention, the inventors have recognised that the methods of use of the multi-character expressions discussed in GB 2293697B and GB 2398143B, and the benefits thereof, can be adapted and used in techniques for improving the integrity of data input forms and datasets captured using those forms, and for helping provide version control of the forms. The multi-character expressions can be adapted for use not only for determining how captured data is stored and accessed in a database, but also how data entry forms for capturing data can be controlled and managed between different entities using the forms and variations thereof.